Watch: World’s Lamest Surf Assault!

A few days ago, a small crowd was surfing a two-foot windswell at First Jetty, Virginia Beach. It ain’t Pipe but what is.

As recorded by the Surfline cam, and posted on Instagram after the fact, we see a shortboarder, clearly someone who can surf, take off deep on the peak and go left. A longboarder wobbles down the face of the wave from the opposite side of the peak. As they collide, the shortboarder jumps over the other board and the longboarder stays on his craft before flopping off the back of the wave.

A non-event.

Shortly afterwards, the shortboarder, Alex Burdett, who is a twenty-eight-year-old tattoo artist at Ghost Ship Tattoo in town there, was cuffed in the middle of a job and jailed on a charge of assault and battery.

“I asked if I could finish the tattoo and he told me to find a way for them to come back another day,” says Alex, who now has to spend a thousand bucks on a lawyer and stay in Virginia Beach for the next month, missing any swells that hit nearby, but interstate, Cape Hatteras and a vacay in Nicaragua. “I have a completely clean record. It was the only time I’ve been in cuffs outside of the bedroom.”

“I pushed him into his first wave. His parents don’t surf,” says Alex. “I saw him do his first floater.”

So talk us through the collision.

“The funny thing is, I fell off my board. I was avoiding a collision. If you look at the video, I’m on a five-two twin and he’s on a ten-foot longboard. He puts two hands on my shoulders and I jump over his board. I didn’t physically touch him. I’m goofy and he’s regular. I can’t jump backwards.

“When the cop turned up in the parking lot at work, I said to my boys, ‘Which one of you fuckers did something?’ No one thought it was me. I didn’t think it had…anything… to do with the incident in the water. As surfers, incidents in the water stay in the water. I thought I taught that to all the people I taught how to surf. If you want to say something, say something. It’s surfing. We should be brothers about it. And I didn’t even say anything in the water. I was a bit pissed that I had a ding in my board, I might’ve said, ‘Fuck’, at worst, but it was a little ding. It wasn’t like he’s fucked my girlfriend or anything.”

As it is, Alex has to hire a lawyer because even if the kid doesn’t turn up in court or tries to drop the charges, it’s The State of Virginia vs Alex Burdett.

How’s he feel about it?

“It was weird sitting in jail thinking about a kid I’d pushed into his first wave sending me to jail over… surfing. It’s insane.”

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Just in: Energy drinks save surfing!

I preach often, like a sweaty fire and brimstone theologian, on the surf industry apocalypse and what precipitated it. “Conservatism!” I shout, a tendril of wet blonde dancing in front of my nose. “Conservatism and fear!” I continue jabbing one crooked finger toward the sky. The brands, our brands, in their hunger to gobble up larger and larger profits watered themselves down, went public, brought in Disney executives and then distressed asset managers to run them all while tanking.

“A ten year fall from GRACE!” I wail as the newly laid off shout “Amen!”

Everyone knows that our major brands, our Volcoms and Quiksilvers and Billabongs, are in deep trouble. These beacons of the surf/skate/snow lifestyle used to throw lavish parties to celebrate films, line releases, competitive victories. They used to sponsor professional surfers for millions of dollars even the worst professional surfers for hundreds of thousands of dollars but no more.

The apocalypse has rendered future Bede Durbidges moot.

I do say, without Red Bull, Monster and even Rockstar it would be nigh impossible for any professional surfer, save John John Florence and Gabriel Medina, to make a living from surfing professionally.

Now, do you think that Nat Young could survive in professional surfing without Rockstar’s stipend? There is no way. Absolutely no way. Without energy drinks professional surfers would be but a memory and professional surfing but a thing Luke Munro once did.

I do think we should show these benevolent giants a little love today. Go now and drink a Red Bull + vodka and smile, knowing that you are keeping dreams alive.

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Science: Wavepool and nature the same!

Earth's great secrets are but one Kelly Slater and one Adam Fincham away from being cracked.

Can you recall that daybefore you were aware of Kelly Slater’s Surf Ranch? When, in your mind’s eye a “wave pool” meant surge-y pushy whitewash-y nonsense? Mostly meant for children and the Chinese?

I can’t.

Like genetically modified food, wavepools now feel eternal and we can debate debate debate their moral value but it is a pointless exercise because they are the future and since they are the future they are also the past.

Eternal.

But oh the debates are interesting enough. The quality of wavepool versus natural waves. The essence etc. I’ll tell you what, I’ve surfed Surf Ranch and had all my thoughts and listened to the thoughts of others and interesting but nothing has definitively swayed me on the “which is better” discussion until yesterday evening when I was shown definitive proof that there is really no difference between the two.

That’s right. In our human arrogance we think our ”feelings” or “experience” matter. Of course they do not. The only thing that matters is empirical proofs and yesterday I was shown empirical proof that wavepools and nature are exactly the same.

And there you have it. Science took us to the moon. Science is allowing us to mock the earth.

Hahaha stupid earth. Your great secrets are but one Kelly Slater and one Adam Fincham away from being cracked.

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Dear Surfing: Who are you?

Are you the WSL or The Surf Ranch? Are you Indonesia or are you Hawaii? Lemoore?

I used to love you but now I am unhappy.

I am confused. I am very, deeply confused. I don’t know what to believe!

There are sharks and wave pools and Olympics and there is of course the World Surf League. I miss the way you used to be. I miss when I could go surfing and just go surfing. I don’t like thinking about the state you’re in because it makes me sad.

But have you changed or I?

I always knew there were sharks. But why do I now spend as much time gazing at my dangling feet as I do on the horizon? I am waiting for a set or I am waiting to die and neither come fast enough. I want ultimate pleasure or I want it all to end. I won’t live in a paradigm of waves and shadows. Fuck anxiety.

I was once utterly desperate for a wave pool in my hometown. I craved one in a similar way that I imagine Barton Lynch craving anything, with froth dripping from every pore of my being. I was sick of getting skunked. I needed infinite perfection.

I just don’t know you anymore, surfing. You’re in a bad place but I think everyone is confused about where that place that is. Fuck the Olympics, right? Fuck corporate competition. In fact, fuck competing all together.

But ultimately he just confused me because I would very much like to surf a wave pool but I would also very much like Kim Jong-Un to point his missiles towards Lemoore.

I just don’t know you anymore, surfing. You’re in a bad place but I think everyone is confused about where that place that is. Fuck the Olympics, right? Fuck corporate competition. In fact, fuck competing all together.

From where I’m sitting, you have never been less competitive. You are dull. The tour is boring. Contrary to the suggestions of the commentary team, claiming a chop-hop on a 2ft wave does not count as passion. There are no rivalries. There is only gracious losing and gracious winning and nothing more. Aside from John, there is more talent off tour. And the fact that the waves are shit throughout every contest period is no factor of chance. No, it is a sign from god that something is very very wrong.

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Watch: Filipe Toledo in “Salvador”!

A branch of lightning comes to El Salvador's famous righthand point, Punta Roca…

Dirty, tortured, gorgeous El Salvador. Set afire for a dozen years through the eighties and nineties with a left vs right civil war that spawned such fiendish crimes as “death squads” and the interference of the Reagan government for whom communism was worse than any sort of human rights indecency.

Of course, now…now… the smallest country in Central America lives in… well, it ain’t what you’d call peace. Its capital, San Salvador, has the third-highest murder rate in the world, a hundred people killed in every one hundred thousand.

On the upside, the joint is a shortish flight from the US and they use US dollars. And in the not-so-little town of La Libertad there is the righthand, sandbottom point Punta Roca, popular with mostly American surfers since the seventies (a ton of the surf scenes in John Milius’ Big Wednesday were shot there). Earthquakes, shitty water, malaria and so forth complete the picture.

For a kinetic hot-rod like Filipe Toledo, who is twenty two and who owned Jeffreys Bay last year, the soft point is a wave where he can charge to and fro, upturning his surfboard and surfing as fast as a dog racing through a cathedral.

I would suggest, as a primer for how to rip a point wave, you might like to watch this latest edit by Filipe’s filmer Bruno Baroni…